Baby swimming lessons

[maybae]

Hi all

Just wondering if you took your little one to swimming classes how old they were? A swimming school I’m looking at said baby’s as young as 6 weeks can start however to me that feels quite young?! This is my first baby however so please feel free to talk about your experiences.

Thank you

We signed up and paid the eye-watering fees, but honestly we dropped out after the first couple. It was fine once the class was on, but it was really just a gigantic hassle. The time of the classes was a pain and I much preferred just going with my husband at the weekend and using a family changing room. It was much less stressful than having to wrangle baby and getting changed. I always felt so flustered by the time we actually entered the pool for our lessons! And the changing room after was just screaming babies. None of them seemed to enjoy the getting changed process after lessons, and when you're on your own trying to dress yourself too, it can get a bit stressful.

To be honest, despite friends saying how much their baby now loves the water cos of their lessons, my DD is totally happy in water too without any formal lessons. We will revisit lessons when she's older.

Also I think there are better and cheaper classes to spend your money on. We loved baby sign language and have found it really useful. Baby massage is also really nice to do when they're young.

Yes i know what the guidelines are about vaccinations - that is why I used the word ‘personally’!

As with almost all baby classes, I think baby swimming is more for the parents than the baby. We have been going for about 3 months (since DS was 3 months). He seems to actively enjoy the classes so we keep it up but the main benefit for me is that I am much more confident with him in the water both in terms of the faff of getting him to the pool and back again but also in terms of letting him float around, go underwater, get splashed etc. I generally take him swimming once a week (in addition to our class) and I'm not sure I'd be able to eg dunk him underwater and let go if I hadn't done it in a class first. That said, they are expensive though so I don't think we'll continue for that long now we have the basics.

I started both of mine at about 6-8 weeks but in a former life I was a swimming teacher. They are both adults now DD still swims competitively and DS swims for pleasure, neither of them can remember a time when they couldn't swim. I didn't sign them up for lessons until they were school aged though, I didn't want to teach them the strokes as I wanted to be someone who was fun in the pool, not someone who was constantly critiquing their technique. I would just take a very young child into the water for fun and confidence.

I started taking DD at 8 months ish and she loved it. It was at a Council pool so only cost £2 including a swim nappy. The class involved bobbing around in the baby pool singing nursery rhymes, doing actions and dunking her under water!

If you have the money, access to a warm pool and a baby who enjoys them then they are good fun. They absolutely not necessary, but we enjoyed them with my son. We only did one term when he was about 4-6mo and we just take him to the normal pool now. Won’t be able to stretch to that kind of money with the second but I don’t regret it at all because it was lovely